A few must-reads highlighting several very different feminist core issues from the recent posts at Feministe:
Octogalore: Opt Out, Push Out, and Pink Collar Paths
Well, it’s critical for workplaces to become more family friendly. Single parents, poor parents, don’t have the option for one parent not to work. And for women and men to have equal access to unemployment benefits.
But it’s also critical for this “family friendly” path not to
Until now both technical and psycho-cultural barriers have prevented the development of effective chemical male contraception, with the psycho-cultural barriers being the primary reason that there does not exist a sufficient potential market to drive investment in R&D to overcome the technical barriers. Even the MRAs who so bemoan women trapping them into unwanted paternity appear oddly unwilling to consider funding the R&D for an effective Male Pill
The Third Edition of the Down Under Feminists Carnival is up at Audrey and the Bad Apples! Thanks Audrey, you’re awesome.
A note to Jim Beam: If you are so embarrassed about these ads that you don’t want anyone to see them, to the point that you’re chasing fair use political commenters from video hosting site to video hosting site with your DMCA heavies, how about issuing a formal, sincere apology instead? A company that doesn’t want anyone actually seeing their ads. Interesting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As tigtog said, people are up in arms about the “The Neighbours” commercial from purveyors of bad bourbon and toxic masculinity, Jim Beam.
Until recently it was thought that only humans and their primate cousins displayed contagious yawning, but now it’s been shown that dogs display the behaviour as well.
Yawning, although sometimes a response to extreme stress, is more often a sign of tiredness; but the reason for why yawning is catching is not fully understood.
He pimped his wife to voters as a potential contestant in a local “beauty contest” that involves skimpy swimwear, topless parades and simulated sex acts – (edited to addwhich to be fair I’m sure he didn’t know was quite so “risque”, but it’s still totally objectifying his wife). (Video here of both McCain’s “quip” and a typical night’s entertainment in the contest) As I’m sure you’ll all
Remember when Jennifer Laycock of The Lactivist was stomped on by Big Pork for selling a T-shirt saying “The other white milk”?
“Your use of this slogan also tarnishes the good reputation of the National Pork Board’s mark, in light of your apparent attempt to promote the use of breastmilk beyond merely for infant consumption”,
the Pork Board whined, with a side serve of insinuation that The Lactivist was a sexual lactation fetish site. (Or were they really, truly freaked out that she is just fine with toddlers and preschoolers breastfeeding, not just infants – and thought that that any association with all that booby malarkey would reflect badly on an organisation that intensively tortures pigs before making them into bacon? We’ll never know.)
Marvel Fashion Show-10, originally uploaded by LJinto.
Taken at a comicon this last weekend, apparently this “fashion parade” was actually organised by Marvel Comics.
Facebookers have probably been following the saga of Scrabulous, the online game that looks and behaves rather like Scrabble. Scrabulous was well put together, and allowed me to play with my friends all over the globe, in group and one-on-one games.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. Despite their IP claims being rather, erm, shaky, Mattel-Hasbro seems to have brought down Scrabulous; it’s now only available for people who don’t live in the USA or Canada.
“Not to worry!”, they bugled. “We’ll bring out our own authentic version for you!”
So says the advertisement below for skin creams. While the cosmetics industry is still full of nasty beauty myth tropes, at least it’s no longer quite as condescending as this.
Image Credit: Ponds-HowToBecomeSomeMansDreamGirl originally uploaded by Wishbook
This phrase just makes me want to hurl: “wistful dreams of being some big strong man’s little dream girl”. Infantilising much?
Hoyden About Town 